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Mitchell Whitelaw – Visualising culture

“In a talk where he jokingly said he felt “no pressure”, Mitchell Whitelaw presents a fascinating look at a number of projects he is involved in to preserve and visualise rich data about Australian cultural assets including photographs, prints and documents. As good as some of TED’s own great visualisation work, Mitchell’s work has won accolades across the Australian cultural sphere.”

Literaturtipp: Jennie Hill (Hg.): The Future of Archives and Recordkeeping A reader.

“The way in which we view the nature of archives and the role of the archivist has changed significantly in the last few decades. With increasing interest from outside of the profession, the idea of archives as the static, impartial carriers of truth and the archivist as a guardian of records has been questioned: how can society take greater control over its own written memory? There have been a number of other changes which have impacted upon the way archivists conceive of themselves and the way in which they work. Chief among these are the rapid rise of technology and the challenges this poses, and the changing place of archives within related fields, such as records and information management.

It is imperative that archivists engage with these challenges if archives are to emerge as a renewed force in the 21st century. This much-needed book is designed not as a practical guide to professional practice, but rather as a reader addressing these challenges. The chapters are contributed by leaders in the field, and are grouped around the following four core themes:

• defining archives
• shaping a discipline
• Archives 2.0: archives in society
• archives in the information age: is there still a role for the archivist?

Each chapter represents a defined argument in its own right to enable readers to dip in and out of the collection as they wish, and the book is structured to highlight chapters that share a common theme.

This book offers a clearly organized approach to developments in archives and recordkeeping and will prove an invaluable resource for students following postgraduate training courses in archive administration as well as for archive professionals wishing to refresh and update their understanding of the profession.

Jennie Alison Hill BA(Hons) MA MSc(Econ) is a Lecturer in Archives and Records Management at the Department of Information Studies, Aberystwyth University. She has previously worked in a wide range of local and national archive services.

November 2010; 256pp; paperback; 978-1-85604-666-4”

Inhaltsverzeichnis (PDF)
Chapter 1: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Situating the archive and archivists (PDF)

Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Gefahr

Der Bestand der Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, einer einzigartigen Forschungsbibliothek für hermetisches Schrifttum in Amsterdam, ist in akuter Gefahr.

1. Zuallererst: Bitte zeichnen Sie die Petition:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ritmanlibrary

Express your protest against the dissolution of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica (Ritman Library)

It is widely known that the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam, founded by J.R. Ritman, was in great danger in the 1990s, when the ING bank took possession of the collection and threatened to sell it. Fortunately, the Dutch government intervened: the BPH was put on the list of protected Dutch heritage, and the State eventually acquired over 40% of it. The books remained at the same physical location, integrated with the rest of the collection, and the government would eventually acquire all of it. As part of this process, there were great plans for further expansion. Largely due to the financial crisis and a change of government this was taking somewhat longer than originally anticipated, but nobody doubted that the library was safe.
Last week this turned out to be incorrect. An extremely valuable medieval manuscript owned by the BPH (The Grail of Rochefoucauld) was put on sale at Sotheby’s, and this triggered a reaction from the Friesland Bank, which took possession of the library, that had apparently been brought in as collateral, in order to get back a 15 million euro loan from mr Ritman. At present the BPH is closed, and intense negotiations are going on behind closed doors. It is impossible at this moment to predict the outcome, but there is no doubt that the situation is extremely serious. There is a very real possibility that the Friesland bank will try to sell at least the ca. 60% of the library that is still owned by mr Ritman, and nobody knows what implications this will have for the rest of the collection and the BPH as a whole, including its staff. The brand-new government of the Netherlands has announced a program of radical financial cuts in the culture section and elsewhere, which makes a renewed intervention from that side highly unlikely.

If the Ritman library would go down, this would mean an enormous blow to international scholarship in hermetic studies. The damage would be irreversible. By signing this petition you express your concern, and ask the Dutch government and the Friesland bank to do their utmost to ensure that the collection will be saved and will remain available for the international scholarly community.

Additionally, you can express your concern by means of a signed letter. The initiative for this petition comes from the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and related currents at the University of Amsterdam (organizationally independent of the BPH, and not in any danger itself), so please send your letter to its director: Prof. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Oude Turfmarkt 141-147, 1012 GC Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Email: w.j.hanegraaff [ at ] http://uva.nl

2. Facebook-Gruppe
https://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_162742683761931

3. Weitere Informationen

http://www.medievalists.net/2010/11/26/major-medieval-library-in-amsterdam-may-have-collection-sold-off

http://www.ritmanlibrary.nl

Zum Verkauf der kostbarsten Handschrift:
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/8427665

UPDATE:

http://heterodoxology.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/voices-in-support-of-the-bph-ritman-library

http://theritmanlibrarymustbepreserved.blogspot.com

Wikileaks to post diplomatic documents

http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE6AP06Z20101126

The United States has briefed Britain, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Norway and Israel ahead of the expected new release of classified U.S. documents, WikiLeaks said on Thursday, citing local press reports.

The whistle-blowing website said by Twitter that American diplomats briefed government officials of its six allies in advance of the release expected in the next few days.

The next release is expected to include thousands of diplomatic cables reporting corruption allegations against politicians in Russia, Afghanistan and other Central Asian nations, sources familiar with the State Department cables held by WikiLeaks told Reuters on Wednesday.

The allegations are major enough to cause serious embarrassment for foreign governments, the sources said.

Stadtarchiv Duisburg: DVD Trailer “Duisburg 1933-1945 “

“Duisburger Bürgerinnen und Bürger erinnern sich an die Zeit, als in der Stadt die Nationalsozialisten herrschten.

Sie erzählen von der Verfolgung der politischen Gegner, von ihren Erfahrungen in der Schule, in der Hitler-Jugend und im Bund Deutscher Mädel. Sie berichten von den Folgen der Aufrüstungspolitik für die Duisburger Industrie, vom Schicksal der Duisburger Juden, von ihren Erlebnissen im Bombenkrieg und vom Einmarsch der Amerikaner bei Kriegsende.

Diese DVD zeigt Dokumente aus dem Stadtarchiv Duisburg sowie bislang unveröffentlichte Dokumente und Fotos aus Privatbesitz.

Unter Mitwirkung von Prof. Dr. Hans Georg Kraume und Dr. Michael Kanther (Stadtarchiv Duisburg) entstand eine spannende Zeitreise in die Vergangenheit von Duisburg.

Filmdokumentation
Länge ca. 90 Min.
plus Bonusmaterial
16:9 PAL
ISBN: 978-3-931616-44-1

Produktion: dembach mediaworks in Zusammenarbeit mit Prof. Dr. Volker Ackermann
Sprecher: Stefan Naas”

Stadtarchiv Neuss: DVD-Trailer “Neuss 1933-1945”

“Neusser Bürgerinnen und Bürger erinnern sich an die Zeit, als in der Stadt die Nationalsozialisten herrschten. Sie erzählen von der Verfolgung der politischen Gegner, von ihren Erfahrungen in der Schule, in der Kirche, in der Hitler-Jugend und im Bund Deutscher Mädel. Sie berichten von der Verfolgung der Neusser Juden, vom Bombenkrieg und vom Einsatz der Zwangsarbeiter bis hin zum Einmarsch der Amerikaner.

Diese DVD zeigt Dokumente aus dem Stadtarchiv Neuss sowie bislang unveröffentlichtes Film- und Fotomaterial aus Privatbesitz.

Unter Mitwirkung von Dr. Jens Metzdorf (Stadtarchiv Neuss) und Dr. Hildegard Welfens (Werhahn-Gruppe) entstand eine spannende Zeitreise in die Vergangenheit von Neuss.

Filmdokumentation
Länge ca. 65 Min.
16:9 PAL
ISBN 978-3-931616-41-0

Produktion: dembach mediaworks in Zusammenarbeit mit Prof. Dr. Volker Ackermann”

Archives on the web, Abstracts Sektion 4

Section 4: Archives and Research:

Stefan PETERSEN und Hanna KEß (Würzburg/DE) „Die Hohe Registratur des Lorenz Fries (1489-1550). Erfassung, Untersuchung und Edition eines Archivrepertoriums des 16. Jahrhunderts im Internet“
The archive of the state of Bavaria in Würzburg holds three impressive folios with the signa-tures „Standbuch 1011,1012 and 1014“, which form the three parts of the so-called Hohe Re-gistratur. They used to be the central finding aid in the registry of the prince-bishops of Würzburg in the 16th century. Their contents are arranged in alphabetical order: the keywords mostly refer to persons, places or subjects related to the prince-bishopric of Würzburg. The Hohe Registratur therefore offers a unique access to its administration at the beginning of the Early Modern Period.
Even though it was written by different hands, the main hand can be clearly identified as Lorenz Fries (1489-1550), the secretary and diplomat of three prince-bishops of Würzburg, who is chiefly famous for his historiographical works Chronik der Bischöfe von Würzburg and his Bauernkriegschronik. In his position in the registry he was also in charge of the prince-bishops’ central archive – an important political weapon at that time. In order to sharpen this weapon Lorenz Fries created the Hohe Registratur and designed its structure and the index of topics. Until now it is the only finding aid for the cartularies at the archive of the state of Bavaria in Würzburg.
Since 2007 this Hohe Registratur is made digitally accessible in form of a database at the De-partment of Regional History of Franconia at the University of Würzburg. This was made pos-sible by a two-year start-up financing from the DFG. The project aims not only to open up the sources at the archive of the state of Bavaria in Würzburg to further investigation, but also to understand the functioning of the prince-bishops’ archive and registry.
The presentation firstly illustrates the Hohe Registratur and its functioning based on an exam-ple: it follows the track from an entry in the Hohe Registratur via an entry in a cartulary to the original charter. Subsequently it introduces the digitalization project: On the one hand it d-scribes the structure and contents of the database. On the other hand it presents some prob-lems connected with the digital preparation of an archival finding aid giving two examples.

Tobias SCHENK (DE) „Präsentation archivischer Erschließungsergebnisse analog und digital: Das deutsch-österreichische Kooperationsprojekt “Die Akten des Kaiserlichen Reichshofrats” – “Presentation of the results of archival indexing, both analogue and digital. “The Files of the Imperial Aulic Council”, a German-Austrian Cooperation Project.”

Legal case files are among the most important sources for research of the early modern age, as they allow seeing things from various different angles in terms of jurisdiction, everyday life, mentality and micro-history. The same goes for the archival heritage of the two supreme courts of the Holy Roman Empire – the Imperial Chamber Court (“Reichskammergericht”), founded in 1495, and the Aulic Council (“Reichshofrat”), established in the 16th century. In Germany those past decades of analysing the Imperial Chamber Court files helped a great deal to re-assess the Holy Roman Empire as being a well-functioning judicial system. The Aulic Council on the other hand attracted far less attention, even though it covered a much greater area of competences both geographically and content-wise. Apart from science-related historical rea-sons, this is mostly due to the insufficient level of indexing of its legal files sto-red in the central Habsburg archive (“Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv” – HHStA). They are estimated to include 70,000 files, which in quantity equal the number of Imperial Chamber Court files of all German archives put together. In view of such quantities, a thorough and complete indexing of those files will surely not be possible during the archive’s normal wor-king hours. In 2007 the Acad-emy of Sciences in Göttingen, however, succeeded in initiating an indexing project scheduled to run for 15 years which aims at re-cataloguing about a third of all Aulic Council files based on scientific criteria. This project which is carried out in close cooperation with the Austrian State Archives and the Austrian Academy of Sciences will ini-tially focus on legal files from the 16th and 17th century, building on experiences gained du-ring the indexing of the Imperial Chamber Court files. The results are being published in prin-ted inventories, which have been continuously released since 2009. Next to this well-established way of publication, the website of the Austrian State Archives is assuming an inc-reasingly important role in presenting the files of the Aulic Council in the context of their tectonic genesis. From an archivist’s point of view, the files of the Aulic Council may well be described as cluster records of Old European calibre. Indexing them will open up both hori-zontal and vertical research opportunities at numerous other archives in Europe. Hence the archival heritage of the Aulic Council is of a cross-linking potential hardly found elsewhere in the file records of the early modern age.

Alois HAIDINGER (Wien/AT) „Archive und Handschriftenforschung in Österreich“ – “Archives and the study of manuscripts in Austria”

The study of manuscripts is first and foremost concerned with manuscripts stored in libraries. This also holds true for those projects dealing with the cataloguing of medieval manuscripts at Austrian monastic libraries, formerly and currently supervised by the Commission for Paleog-raphy and Codicology of Medieval Manuscripts of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

In monasteries, any late medieval archival manuscript had almost without exception been ma-nufactured in the monastic scriptorium itself. The manuscripts of a monastic library, on the other hand, were not only produced by the monastic scribes but rather acquired by way of pur-chase, exchange or donation. Whilst manuscripts of an archive are usually dated or easy to time precisely due to their contents, most of the manuscripts in a monastic library are of unknown date of origin, which therefore has to be determined by comparing type of script and analysing watermarks.

Examining the paper of dated archival manuscripts gives us a clear picture of what sorts of pa-per where normally used in a scriptorium. When two undated manuscripts of a monastic library are attested to carry identical watermarks, it is safe to assume that the manuscripts we-re pro-duced only a few years apart. This method has already been used with great success in the dat-ing of 650-some paper manuscripts of the 14th and 15th century at the monastic libra-ry of Klos-terneuburg: Several hundred watermarks where identified in approximately 50 da-ted land regis-ters and account books opened before 1600. To a large extent those watermarks could be veri-fied in other undated manuscripts of the library.

Archival manuscripts provide us with a much better idea of how script developed than any of the liturgical, literary or legal manuscripts that can usually neither be pinpointed in date or place. Archival manuscripts – such as for instance the Vienna city codex, called the “Iron Book” – were normally kept by a large number of people over an extended period of time. By means of script analysis, such manuscripts become a very valuable source of reference for tim-ing undated material. In general, a more intensive research into archival material could greatly improve our concept of script development.

Antonella AMBROSIO (Napoli/IT) “Monasterium from the Research to the Didactics at the University of Naples”
The essence of my speech is to offer a concrete example of the educational potential use of the portal http://Monasterium.net and, in particular, of the software EditMOM. This example is re-pre-sented by Diplomatics and Exegesis of historical sources put in the Master in Library and Archival Science and Methodology of the Research, during the academic year 2009 – 2010. It is in the broader context of the research conducted at the Department of History at the Univer-sity of Studies of Naples Federico II, in collaboration with Icarus, within the Monasterium project that led to the creation of several digital archives on the portal http://Monasterium.net.
The course offered the students, aspiring archivists, a training task of describing and editing of medieval charters, from the Southern Italy digital archives in http://Monasterium.net.
In a first phase were presented basic issues in the history of charters in the Middle Ages, with particular reference to documentation produced and stored in Southern Italy, in the context of the most trusted online resources available for the use of medieval documents and existing digi-tal technologies, such as the XML markup language.
At a later stage first a group and than an individual activity was carried out in computer lab, through which, according to the pedagogical principle of ‘learning by doing’, students carried out practical experiences on medieval charters created with EditMOM software.
These experiments were aimed primarily at assessing the tradition of the text (original, copy, etc.), the diplomatic analysis of the forms, the formulation of abstracts and transcription, the acquisition of the methodology of critical edition.
The results achieved by students in the two described phases, and during the ongoing and fi-nal evaluations, encourage to think that this kind of teaching is able to convey contents and meth-odology of the discipline, in a more simple and more appreciated way by students, and to make them aware of issues relating to the archivist profession made even more challenging in the digital age.

Daniel RUSSEL (München/DE) „Virtuelles deutsches Urkundennetzwerk. Ein Projekt im Spannungsfeld von Archiven und Forschung“ – “Virtual german Chartersnetwork. A Project joining Archives and Research”

Charters from the Middle and early Modern Age are a prominent group of sources for histori-cal research. With the critical analysis of their authenticity in the early Modern Age, at that time a relevant concern for the everyday life, the development of the methodology of modern historical research had begun. The Projekt “Virtuelles deutsches Urkundennetzwerk (Virtual German Charters-network)” aims at creating a research-environment for this ubiquitous group of sources, which accesses all possibilities of the modern information technologies. There are three main goals: First, the prototypical development of workflows, aiming at the successive, long-term, allotted and cooperative digitalisation of the entire German charters portfolio. Second, to design/develop technical instruments that can create a working environment in accordance with the information technologies. Third, this work environment should be tested within university research and teaching through the implementation of a range of carefully constructed pilot projects.
Through the creation of such a research environment based on the platform of the monasteri-um project, which can be used for the further handling of one of the central group of historical sources by medieval studies, the goal of sustainability will be directly targeted. By expanding the functionality of this platform, the project also archives its evolutionary aim.

Archives on the web, Abstracts Sektion 3

Section 3: Best practices:
István KENYERES (Budapest/HU) “The Hungarian Archives Portal: A Common Solution for Digitized Archival Material and Databases”

Budapest City Archives established the Archive Portal of Hungarian Self-governing Archives (http://www.archivportal.hu) by the commission of the former Hungarian Ministry of Education and Culture in 2009. The main goal of the project was to launch a common solution for publishing of digitized archive material and databases. During the project we created and published on the Internet 6 different databases with the same frame system by the attendance of 21 Hungarian Archives.
• Complex (Summarized) database: this database contains integrated datas of individual data-bases (meta databases) prepared by Archives. More than 150.000 digitalized objects belong to approx. 800.000 records (e.g. plans, maps, certificates and documents).
• Inventory of fonds and subfonds contains the basic data of more than 30.000 fonds and 24.000 subfonds of 17 Archives.
• Database of the Documents of MDP/MSZMP Party (Working People’s Party (MDP) and the Hungarian Social Workers’ Party (MSZMP) database: this database consists reports from the leader bodies of state party digitalized by 7 county Archives. Currently more than 400.000 pages of the documents are available in the database, in searchable pdf format.
• Database of Cadastral maps. There are cadastral maps and maps of the second military sur-vey from the 1850’s in the database, in georeferred version. Nearly 120.000 georeferenced settle-ments’ maps are put together on county level and they are presented with self-developed, free-download client software. The georeferenced maps of the second military survey (1850) are also available in the system. We established a separate database with sett-lement names based on the best historical gazetteer. Since this gazetteer is completed with the geocodes of the set-tlements we could connect a record of settlements to the maps. The se-cond military survey’s maps are available in synchronized version with Google Map.
• Database of Archival publications. Approx. 600.000 pages of publications are available from 25 Archives in searchable pdf format.
• Database of bourgeois, noblemen and office-bearers. This database contains personal basic data of 35.000 persons (e.g. the bourgeois of Buda and Pest free royal cities, noblemen of Zala county, office-bearers of the Zala county and Óbuda).
Each database has its own search engine and indexes. There are very sophisticated searching possibilities using different operators. A separate index belongs to each search field which shows the whole content of the field. There is a possibility to search in the index as well. The unified search engine on these databases enables the simultaneous and easy search in all of them. Practically, in the unified search there is only one field which contains all elements of all databases and a general index is also available. Moreover, in the unified search there is a possi-bility to filter the type of sources, databases, archives or the records having digitized objects.

Monika PEKOVÁ (Bratislava/SK) “Archival heritage in Slovakian State Archives and its presentation on Internet”
Key words:
Archives, access to archives, information exchange, digitization, website

A massive introduction of information technology in every field of human activities leads to a transition to information society. Reality of these formerly only theoretical and philosophical considerations is presented nowadays by Internet technology and new Information and Com-munication Technology (ICT) services in general. These possibilities create an infrastructure for a global information exchange and enable creation and using of information sources wher-ever it is and to anybody who has an access to Internet. The Internet enlarged both possibilities positive but also negative of using the information. As every tool – also the Internet can be used and misused as well.
The most important influence of information systems on archives is created by the following facts:
– possible digitization of different types of classical documents (text, image, sound),
– formation of hypertext, multimedial and hypermedial (www) documents,
– standardization of digitized documents and languages to organize character forms of www documents (SGML, HTML, etc.),
– standardization of exchange, communication and query protocols,
– possibilities of displaying and accessing of different information sources containing infor-mation about documents and also full documents,
– possibilities of interconnection different information sources and users wherever in the world.
However, the ICT also brings a totally new aspect and quality to archival field – digitally born records of all types and forms of which many will become electronic / digital archival documents after a certain period of time. These new media certainly bring urgent needs for chan-ges in methodology and new methodical approach to archival work, which should have an impact also on changes in educational background of new generation of archivists.
The other aspect of this development is necessity of proper technical equipment including appropriate software application. Enormous development in this field which results in more effective and efficient technology providing better rapid tools for users enabling to get more and precise complex information from different fields of interest can be considered as a threat to archives – their technical equipment can become obsolete in very short period of time.
Practical application of these changes in real life therefore will need a lot of effort, energy and financial support in order to improve on-line access to information about archives and then to digital copies of selected archival documents by means of new IT via Internet. The archives´ websites are significant elements of the system.
The paper inform about the structure of state archives in the Slovak Republic and the scope and content of archival heritage offered by presentations via Internet.

Barbara BERSKA (Warszawa/PL) “Educational activities of Polish archives in the web”
Polish State Archives operate in the network subordinated to the General Director of State Archives, whose role is to coordinate all aspects of activities carried out within the archives. In the coming years, one of the priorities set for the archives by the Director is the expansion of educational activities. In order to pursue this objective in the entire network, an educational platform has been put in place on the website of State Archives. The main aim of this project directed at large spectrum of Internet users is to promote the image of the Archives as a net-work of modern institutions that work jointly in order to carry out a social and educational mission. The platform is used for the presentation of documents in a form that allows the largest possible number of users access to information. Schools, colleges and universities constitute a special target group, for whom additional educational materials are published.

Jean-François MOUFFLET (Paris/FR) “Digitization of archives in France”
Nowadays, few French archival institutions have not embarked on high-quality digitization of the most popular and symbolic documents they hold. For almost twenty years a considerable amount of data has been produced by a network componed of national and territorial archival institutions. This presentation, after a previous recall of the background of digitization in France, will deliver an overview of the main achievements: types of documents aimed by dig-itization projects, technical practices and recommendations and exemples of online access and websites.

It will particularly underline the development of online access to digitized archives since 2003, due to the technological progresses, the spread of the Internet society and the strong encour-agement of the French Ministry of Culture which produced technical advices and pro-vided fi-nancial supports for the cultural services.

This policy had consequences on the uses and purposes of the digitization and brought archival institutions to compete with imagination and creativity in the way archives are made ac-cessible. Initially a means to preserve the original documents, digitization now finds its innovation in the adaptation to the needs of the public, who has today the opportunity to enrich the resources offered by the archival institutions. Such practice comes from the philosophy of Web 2.0 and is also promoted by the Ministry of Culture which financially supports « innova-tive digital ser-vices ». The most interesting examples will be presented.
However, the issue of conservation should not be avoided: the archivists, who have mainly thought in terms of data availability, also realize that there is a digital heritage to preserve and that digitization, without the dimension of data preservation, can not be sustainable.

Alfonso SÁNCHEZ MAIRENA (Madrid/ES) “New Goals of PARES (Spanish Archives Web Portal)”
PARES (Portal de Archivos Españoles = Spanish Archives Web Portal: http://pares.mcu.es) is the third generation on the Computerization program of the State Archives managed by the Ministry of Culture. This Web Portal was inaugurated on May 2007 as an integrated platform, not only for the spreading of a working net of twelve archives distributed all around the Spanish geography, but also to provide modules and electronic tools for the standardized work on the Description tasks; also to manage the archival public services; even to support the control and the preservation of the documentary fonds; and specially to serve as the frame where to execute the archival practices developed by the technical community of members of the Spanish State Corps of Archivist.
After of several decades focused on computerization developments, especially since the year 2010 it’s being raised new types of challenges to reinforce the integrated information system responsible of the management of 280 Km of shelves full of documents. Those challenges should be specified about four main goals or action lines, as to provide interoperability with the main archival spreading lines in Europe, as the projects APEnet (European Archives Por-tal) and EUROPEANA – EDL Foundation. But, above all, we have as great challenge to de-velop of an Archival Information System as PARES, so much influenced by the traditional techniques habits and inertias of the archival profession, mostly in an environment as ours, where the His-torical documents has been predominant until now. And this is a moment when the constant changes and adjustment to a changing to the environment where we live, must be focused more to satisfy the necessities of the Archives users.
Because of, once the Computing platform of PARES has been stabilized with several modules to develop the description and control of the fonds; to manage the public archival services; and to serve as Web platform for archival spreading with a large and stable community of clients, now it’s the moment to specify the main action lines or goals to overcome the new challenges, as:
1. Developing of PARES until the Web 2.0 philosophy, where the final information ar-chi-tecture that arrives to the citizen or to the researcher, it must be perfectly useable, satis-fying as possible the external users needs. This adjustment is recommended and it should be a normal practice between the professional communities at the Archives. Also, it will must in-spire the design of new tools ant the suitable of the contents to spread.
2. The convergence with the international working lines involves the necessary transfor-mation of PARES in an open archives system, through the adaptation of the information sys-tem to the model of OAI-PMH (Open Archives-Protocol for Metadata Harvesting).
3. At this moment, the computerization program of the Spanish State Archives has pro-vided a stable platform of work, which will develop according to the rhythms that the techno-logical advances would mark. Until now, it has been more valued the data increasing in the information system by the progressive input of descriptive data bases and of banks of digitized pictures of the documents. It was found the generation of a big volume of archival infor-mation to get more presence at Internet, and to create a customers community. So that, now it’s time to reconsider the traditional working lines in the organization, and we must focus to improve better archival information quality, as in it’s making, as at its spreading. To attend this, it has been necessary to reinforce the efforts in the line of the Standardized archival de-scription works, and it has begun the introduction of the quality process methodology in the State Archives. As a result of this, became an improvement on the organization at the working teams; also the making of new proceedings in base of methodologies obtained from the daily practice, and, in the creation of new rules as the one for Access points to design archival In-dexes and Creators (2010).
4. The development from the traditional services of analogical and digital reprography, generally suppliers of security and diffusion copies, to the modern concept of the Digi-tal Pre-servation Centre, which will provide coverage to the new Electronic Public State Administra-tion in Spain.
The main target consist to provide more social visibility to the Archives world at the frame of the modern Information society, providing cultural quality contents, at the same time that re-vi-talizing the archival profession in the frame of better public quality services demand, and easier to access.

Andreas KRÄNZLE (Einsiedeln/CH)
„Die Reorganisation des Einsiedler Klosterarchivs (nicht nur) im Netz“. – „The Reorganisation of the Einsiedler Klosterarchiv (not only) on the Web”

The Kloster Einsiedeln has been reorganizing its archives completely since 2005 (indexing, preservation, documentation, organization, accessibility, new building etc.).
From the beginning, the website of the Klosterarchiv (http://www.klosterarchiv.ch) was used as communication platform and indexing tool. At the same time, information could be made ac-cessible for research and public use. In the public area of the website, you can find e.g. the Summarien (historical finding aids mainly from the 18th century), as well as five volumes of the Documenta (editions from the 17th century). In total there are about 20 000 pages with exceedingly detailed information on the historical archives. These documents, available only as pictures, already allow answering many requests with a hint to these aids. The charters up to 1525 are digitized and made accessible with an inventory and additional information. The metadata of these charters are uploaded in CEI-format (Charter Encoding Initiative) directly to the monasterium-platform (http://www.monasterium.net) so that the workload for updates is re-duced to a minimum. Next year the indexing of charters with an inventory will be continued up to the year 1600. Selected documents can be browsed on the website. At any time metadata can be exported (keyword: long-term preservation) to METS (Metadata Encoding & Trans-mission Standard) so that documents can be displayed independently from the website and in different environments (e.g. DFG-Viewer). In the picture archive, users can participate in indexing of the material. They can post comments and help indentifying the pictures. In this way, numerous pictures have already been recognized. The entire archives are made accessible through the internal area of the website in an ISAD(G) conform database. Hence, people from various places (Einsiedeln, Schwyz, Zürich) can work together on the project. Moreover, no additional costs for infrastructure (server, additional PCs etc.) arise. For the documentation of the project the web is also used. For example, the guidelines for indexing are designed in a Wiki. In this way, collaborators always have access to the most current version.

Silvia GSTREIN (Innsbruck/AT) „Digitisation on demand: opportunities and challen-ges“
Following the European Commissions’ digital strategy European libraries have been meticulously digitising parts of their cultural heritage. At the same time they have been witnessing an increasing demand from researchers, readers and users for exploitation of digital resources, especially access to historical books „here and now“. This is exactly where the eBooks-on-Demand (EOD) network starts from, providing a trans-European digital document delivery service for end-users from all over the world. Currently the EOD network comprises over 30 libraries from 12 European countries. Since 2007 several thousand PDF eBooks have been gen-erated, delivered to users from over 30 countries worldwide and subsequently made available to the public through the repositories of the participating libraries. User reactions have been very encouraging so far and thus more and more libraries are now thinking of offering the service, too.
The starting point is the online catalogue of any participating library. There, the EOD button is placed with all items available for digitisation. At the moment, these are books fulfilling the following criteria: (1) items not yet digitised, and (2) public domain books. Any user inte-rested in a certain book tagged with the EOD button simply needs to click on this button.
Of course, such an additional library service can’t be maintained within the context of usual (mass) digitisation only, but needs extra resources for management and administration, e.g. order management, customer communication, payment procedures and so on. Therefore, a structure allowing for efficient processing of orders has been designed. At the end a central-decentral service network has been implemented, where some processes such as Optical Char-acter Recognition (OCR) of scanned images or online payment of completed orders are hosted centrally. Other services – such as scanning itself – are carried out de-centrally at the participat-ing libraries.
At the moment attempts are being made to also include archives and other cultural institutions into the network. The aim is to provide digitisation on demand far beyond the world of books in the narrow sense. As a first step, the St. Pölten Diocese Archive (Austria) has been starting to implement the service in 2010. The conference talk tries to discuss the opportunities and challenges of digitisation on demand especially in the context of archival institutions after having given an overview of the current service.

György RÁCZ (Budapest/HU) “Medieval Hungary online – The Hungarian State Ar-chives´ online portal on medieval charters”
The newest service of the National Archives of Hungary made the remained archival material of the medieval Hungarian Kingdom accessible on the Internet, irrespectively of time and space. In the past few years, digital image of more than 108 thousand records preserved in the NAH and several thousand records preserved in other Hungarian institutions were added to databases established in the past decades. The information system is suitable to manage in a unified structure those connected sources that were scattered through the storms of history and are still preserved in different places. The collection of charters is not only the most sig-nificant base of sources deriving from medieval Hungary, the whole Carpathian Basin, but it provides invaluable data relating to the medieval history of Balkan countries, mainly Romania, Serbia and Bosnia. As opposed to the traditional search techniques with regard to the stu-dy of the Middle Ages, the portal provides an infinitely faster and more reliable access to data and immediate access to the image of charters, thus it sharply increases the effectiveness of historical researches.

The database is available on the website of the NAH under menu item “Databases” (http://www.mol.gov.hu), or directly under http://mol.arcanum.hu/dldf. The search is avai-lable in Hungarian and English, and is aided by a Hungarian–English glossary for certain con-tents of high priority. The database was established gradually from the 1980’s on the basis of Iván Borsa’s conception, which was published in 1971. As the first information technology service of the NAH the institution had to face all the problems of database construction and digitalization in the course of the 40-year-long project. The root cause of the establishment was that the planned, systematic exploration and publication of medieval documents of the Hungarian Kingdom could not be realized until the second half of the 20th century. In the second half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century, the numerous publications including the re-mained charters involved only an insignificant number of the documents. Due to the absence of the staff, financial resources and science policy required to publish the sources- whether as abstract or as full text – after 1945, the NAH chose the computer-aided data processing in connec-tion with archival finding aids as a way of improving efficiently the conditions of medievalism in a short time. The presentation demonstrates its conception and the special features of the data contents.


Francesca KLEIN (Firenze/IT) “Il progetto Diplomatico dell’Archivio di Stato di Firenze e i suoi sviluppi nel web” – “The Diplomatico project of the State Archives in Florence and its further developments on the web”

The Diplomatico project of the State Archives in Florence has been digitised between 1998 and 2002 and is available online since 2008. The project aims at giving an easier access to the documents, as well as at a better preservation. It is part of a huge digitising initiative running in Italy since the 1990s, a programme that had many interesting and sometimes also pionee-ring aspects in the European panorama.

From a methodological point of view, the Diplomatico project does not follow the predomi-nant criteria of Italian digitising initiatives that aim mostly at the creation of a sort of ”virtual ar-chives”, as a result of the aggregation of digital versions of documents, papers and collecti-ons.

Due to the impossibility of reproducing completely, in the Diplomatico project (140.000 items. dating ca. from the VIII. to the XIX. cent.) we choose to follow the chronological order of the documents and not to select single documents from different periods. Until now 85.000 docu-ments, covering the period from VIII. to the end of XIV. cent., have been digitized. The digital version of Diplomatico is connected to the “metadata” of the archival description and to the reproduction of ancient manuscript inventories with briefs. These choices allow us to reach a satisfying level of integration between the resources and the outcomes, above all the given in-formation.
The Diplomatico online is mainly used by researchers and professors for educational purposes all over the world. Archives are undergoing deep changes because of the spread of new tech-nologies, reorienting also to new forms of communication and opening to a “new” public, which comprises the majority of users of archives on the web.
In our opinion, this media that allows communicating the contents of Diplomatico to a “new”, less academic public, with various social and cultural backgrounds, is much more useful than a virtual archive. In fact, we are experimenting on the implementation of the website of the State Archives, adding applications for didactic purpose, reusing the digital contents and the Diplomatico itself, as special tours for schoolchildren.

Jitka KŘEČKOVÁ (Praha/CZ) “Czech National Archives´ charters on http://Monasteri-um.Net
The National Archives in Prague has been participating in the international project Monasterium, founded in Lower Austria in 2002, since 2005 and consequently by degrees, further Czech state archives, ecclesiastic institutions and Czech universities are being linked to the project. The National Archives, as the biggest one in the Czech Republic, has taken hold of duty to co-ordination of the group activities.

Nowadays, beside the National Archives charters, the ones from Moravian Provincial Archi-ves in Brno, regional state archives in Trebon and Pilsen, followed by Charles University Ar-chives and Cistercians monastery in Upper Brod, have been made accessible to collect in da-tabase. The process of digitalisation of above mentioned documents even those coming from other archives groups is being in progress in the Czech Republic now.

In 2008, the National Archives was affiliated as a member of the association named ICARus (International Centre for Archival Research), constituted on the base of paper declaration of the involved archives groups and institutions from the countries participating in the present project Monasterium.

The documents of the National Archives first department archives holdings are gradually ma-de accessible on website address: www. http://monasterium.net. Moreover the further National Ar-chives departments documents are to be digitized and put into the database in future.

Nowadays, in 2010, about 19200 documents from the National Archives most valuable ar-chives groups have been digitized.

More than a half of digitalised documents come from religious Catholic central ruled institu-tions archives holdings in the Czech state territory, namely secular or monastic ones.

There is to make a great deal for the National Archives participation in the international pro-ject Monasterium and membership of the association named ICARus. Beside the research use of virtual archives documents within the European institutions, there is another positive fact for the benefit of the good state of originals – the great reduction of their lending course in ar-chives.

The possibility of online metadata making up, as well as registers creating, transcriptions or texts translations being filled directly in the website enables great opportunities for educatio-nal programmes at universities with helpful assistance of website moderators.

Redmer ALMA (Assen/NL) „Das Digitale Urkundenbuch von Groningen und Drenthe“ – „The Digitaal oorkondeboek Groningen en Drenthe“

The early charters and documents in the Dutch provinces Groningen and Drenthe are the most important historical sources of these regions. Therefore, the two provinces are in an excep-tional position compared to the source material of other provinces of the Netherlands. There are hardly any older books of expenses, record books or other serial sources that can be sys-temati-cally researched up to the middle of the 16th century. This is why the charters, docu-ments and their transcriptions in Groningen and Drenthe are so important up to about 1600. However, difficult retrieval and the sparse written records make research rather difficult. In the course of the project Digitaal oorkondeboek Groningen en Drenthe (DOGD), more than 20.000 charters and other sources from the provincial archives in Groningen and Drenthe have been made digitally accessible. The project is an initiative of the Stichting Digitaal Oork-ondeboek Groningen en Drenthe founded in 2002, which includes the Rijksuniversiteit Gron-ingen, the Groninger Archieven and the Drents Archief. The project’s website http://www.cartago.nl is a XML-based system that makes all relevant documents accessible with scans of original documents, existing metadata and transcriptions that are also searchable. In 2007, the first phase of the project was completed. We expect to expand the content of ‘Cart-ago’ with the complete source material (such as letters and bills etc.) from Groningen and Drenthe. The Dutch province Friesland and the German Ost-Friesland are also interested in making their earlier documents accessible with Cartago. This implies that Cartago will be multi-lingual in the future. When the project was started ten years ago, there were hardly any digital registers that could function as examples. In the Netherlands and Belgium today, there are still hardly any digital registers – and certainly no projects in this scope – that make medieval sources digitally accessible. Therefore, the structure of the system was newly developed, but it also corresponds in some aspects with other XML-based digital registers.
In the presentation the DOGD is demonstrated and recent developments and perspectives are discussed in regional, national and international respects.

Simone WÜRZ (Mainz/DE) „The Regesta Imperii Online“

Angelegt als Inventar aller urkundlichen und historiographischen Quellen der römisch-deutschen Könige von den Karolingern bis zu Maximilian I. sowie der Päpste des frühen und hohen Mittelalters gehören die Regesta Imperii zu den großen Quellenwerken der deutschen und europäischen Geschichte. In Form chronologisch angeordneter Regesten (= abstracts) referieren sie den aktuellen Stand der Forschung incl. der wissenschaftlichen Literatur. Das Projekt wird von der Deutschen Kommission für die Bearbeitung der Regesta Imperii e.V. bei der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, und ihren Schwesterunternehmungen an den Akademien in Wien und Berlin betreut.
Einen digitalen Weg schlugen die RI bereits Ende der 90er Jahre mit der Publikation von zehn Bänden der Regesten Friedrichs III. als CD-Rom mit diversen Suchfunktionen ein. Die Digitalisierung des Gesamtbestandes wurde im Jahr 2001 in Kooperation mit der Bayerischen Staats-bibliothek München und unter Förderung der DFG begonnen. Seit 2007 sind die derzeit über 70 Bände als uneingeschränkt durchsuchbare Volltext-Datenbank online verfügbar. Daneben ist der RI-OPAC als eine der weltweit leistungsfähigsten Literaturdatenbanken mit inzwischen 1,4 Millionen Titelnachweisen ebenfalls frei zugänglich.
Die Aufbereitung des Bestandes hin zu einem verstärkten Vernetzungspotential ist den RI-Online ein besonderes Anliegen. Für den RI-OPAC hat sich beispielsweise der Einsatz der PND (seit 2009) vielfach bewährt, die von verschiedensten Projekten als automatisierte Schnittstelle genutzt wird.
Wesentlich weiter gehen die Ideen für die Regestendatenbank. Neben Plänen zum Einsatz auch von PND und Georeferenzierung ist vor allem die verstärkte Einbindung von Bildmaterial geplant. Mittelfristig ist angedacht, die rund 150.000 Regesten mit entsprechenden Abbildungen der diversen Überlieferungsformen anzureichern, vorbehaltlich der Klärung rechtlicher und technischer Fragen.
Dem kommen natürlich auch die zahlreichen digitalen Angebote von Archiven entgegen. Derzeit gestaltet sich dies trotz persistenter Links in der Regestendatenbank als schwierig: man-gels automatisierter Schnittstellen wäre reine Handarbeit mit entsprechenden Abgleichen und einzeln gesetzten Links nötig – bei 150.000 Regesten aufgrund der schieren Masse (noch) ein großes Problem.

Archives on the web, Abstracts Sektion 1-2

Abstracts (in order of presentations)

Manfred MATZKA (Wien/AT) “e-government 2.0”
eGovernment is a synonym for a modern and innovative state in which quality, rust and speed are central elements. eGovernment includes the totality of ll electronic public administration services for the Austrian people. With it the access to and the contact with public authorities become easier. More than 80 percent of the enterprises already use eGovernment services, more and more citizens are electronic customers. The integration of all citizens, data protec-tion management and customer orientation have the uppermost priority.

The Austrian eGovernment strategy is based on basic concepts, base components and open standards, which serve as guidelines for the implementation of electronic services and the creation of the underlying infrastructure.

The development and implementation of electronic public services is one of he priorities of the Austrian Federal Government. The government plan principally states that every citizen in every community should have access to all forms of eGovernment at the federal, provincial and local levels. Secure communication and transactions and confidential handling of perso-nal data have top priority.

eGovernment will do more than just improve services, save costs, make work processes more efficient, and enable independent work. It will also make communication between citizens and businesses and the government more transparent, and open up new possibilities for the way information is presented and acceed.

Stefano VITALI (Bologna/IT)
“Digital re-mediation: archives, archivists, researchers and the future of an old professi-on”

Archivists and archival institutions have always played a crucial role as mediators between the documents they have in custody and the users who seek archival materials and wish to have access to those documents. The archival mediation has been exercised both by the pro-duction of finding aids and other tools of description and by face-to-face interaction through the reference services in the reading rooms of archival institutions.

The advent of digital technologies and the Internet have radically transformed conditions and tools of such mediation. From one side, in recent years, the public of archives have increased and changed as a consequence of social, cultural and technological transformations, including the growing presence of archival materials on the Web. From the other side, the “place” whe-re archival mediation now occurs is largely the Web. Face-to-face interaction have been re-placed by remote mediation. Archival finding aids which users previously consulted in the reading rooms with the assistance of the reference archivists are now produced in digital for-mat and published on the Web. Structure, organization of information and language of search tools have had to be adapted to the new media and the new environment where they are con-sulted. Archival materials are directly accessed in virtual reading rooms which are radically diverse from the real ones. Instead of reducing the mediation layers between users and archi-val materials, the Web has increased them adding others layers of mediation such as the tech-nological and communication ones.

How are archivists and archival institutions trying to face that transformations which, borrow-ing a concept developed by the new media theorists Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, can be defined as a re-mediation process? And what they should do in order to adapt their role of mediators to the environment of the WWW in which it is now mainly played? And how can Web 2.0 technologies help to establish new forms of interactions with “old” and “new” users and the general public?

The way in which archivists will answer to those question will be crucial for the future of their old profession.
Contact: vitali.stefano@gmail.com (Soprintendenza archivistica per l’Emilia-Romagna)


Manfred THALLER (Köln/DE)
„Preserving forever in digital times. The mandate of the archives between the benefits of col-laborative editing and the pitfalls of digital long-term preservation“

The curator of a memory institution always faces contradictory challenges: Providing optimal access to heritage documents endangers them; keeping them save also keeps them from public knowledge. Modern media in the world of the archives have frequently been seen as a solution to that conflict, as they allow the strict preservation of the originals while providing optimal access to the digital surrogates.

Digital surrogates, however, seem to be rather fragile in a new way and keeping them avai-lable forever creates completely new challenges – even more severe, if the digital content is not a surrogate, but the original, as in the case of “born digital documents” of modern administrative processes.

The first part of the presentation describes the technical concepts underlying the just started project “Digitales Archiv NRW” , which combines a state wide platform for the long term preservation of the content of memory institutions with a platform for the maximum availabil-ity of that content for the public.

While the goals of providing the easiest possible access to cultural heritage objects and kee-ping them safe forever seem to exclude each other, the goals of providing the highest possible quality of metadata allowing access to their digital representations and providing that access at the same time now, and not a few centuries in the future, when limited funding finally cat-ches up with the amount of source material available, are frequently considered to be even more con-tradictory.

The presentation continues by the description of the solutions prepared for the resolution of that conflict in the context of Monasterium and some projects using in the meantime the same software platform.

This introduces a final dilemma, however: If we accept, that the information needed to access a body of source material is added to it constantly, in a process which relies on many contri-bu-tors, the digital surrogates, which we wanted to preserve for ever, are slowly accumulating additional information. This seems to be directly opposed to the notion of keeping a digital surro-gate or original safe and unchanged forever.

We, therefore, conclude with the model for the integration of a collaborative projects like Monasterium into a preservation concept like North-Rhine Westphalia’s Digital Archive.

Section 1: Current and future Challenges for Archives on the Web:
Gerhart MARCKHGOTT (Linz/AT)
„Vom Diener zum Dienstleister“ – „From Servant to Service Provider“

Thoughts and ideas on the new self-awareness of archives (in Austria)

1. Servant: A member of the domestics, dependent worker in charge of tasks ill-befitting one’s rank
Service Provider : An economic entity providing services (an economic good for the fulfil-ment of demand rather than for production)
2. A servant is directed by others, service providers are self-contained
3. „There are some who are in darkness and the others are in light, and you see the ones in brightness, those in darkness drop from sight“. (Bertolt Brecht)

Until only a few decades ago the existence of archives was unquestioned and economic thinking outrageous. Since the 19th century a scientific archivist defined his concept of science through history; hence scientific achievements needed academic ground. Whilst scholars at the universities enjoyed their prestige, the „ones left behind“ in the archives toiled in the dark to preserve and prepare those very sources the scholars gained fresh glory from.

By the end of the 20th century several factors coincided to smash that constellation:

– The primacy of contemporary history in the public perception
– The change in public administration towards becoming more customer-oriented
– Task reforms and (most recently) the crisis of public budgets
– Changes in the organisational set-up of universities and the IfÖG (Institute for Austrian His-torical Research)
– IT

Currently a lot of archives are undergoing a phase of reorientation: Their raison d’être, their main tasks and strategies have to be readjusted to present-day conditions in terms of economy, society and technology. While the reasons for their existence as well as the main tasks are determined by the buyer (who are themselves often deeply involved in change processes), the strategic direction, i.e. the long-term focus set apart from day-to-day work can be determined by the archive itself.

Determining factors (mostly unbiased!):
• Direct responsibility – Fulfilling of tasks
• To drift aimlessly – To steer actively
• Administration-oriented – Customer-oriented
• Research – Indexing
• Profitability – Implicitness
• Digitisation – Handling originals
• Internet – Reading room
• Island – Team

There is no one-size-fits-all. No one knows how things will continue to develop, and that is why it’s even more important to become aware of one’s own position in order to clearly make out one’s future options.

Alina PAVELESCU (Bucuresti/RO)
“Learning from others’ experiences: the debates around the public access to documents in electronic format at the National Archives of Romania”

This presentation deals with the issue of building an electronic system at the National Ar-chives of Romania in order to facilitate the public access to historical records in electronic format. We will present the managerial challenge represented by this kind of task due to the necessity to rebuild the administrative infrastructure of the institution, to resize some archival procedures or to rapidly change others, to change professional mentalities and the training priorities of the Romanian archivists.

We will also deal with the legal aspects concerning the public access to historical records in postcommunist Romania and with the legal constraints at work in the process of building an electronic system to facilitate the public access to historical records.

The focusing point of our discussion will concern the Romanian debates around the applicati-on of the international archival standards, seen as polemics “local versus global” or even “tra-dition versus modernity”.

Marta NOGUEIRA (Lisboa/PT)
„Archives in Web 2.0: new contexts, new opportunities (Facebook, Flickr, YouTube)“

Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook (https://www.facebook.com), Flickr (http://www.flickr.com) and YouTube (https://www.YouTube.com) are already used by ar-chives in the informal Web 2.0 reality. This new contexts and tools allows for new types of interac-tion, new opportunities regarding institutional promotion, new ways of providing their services and making their heritage known to the community. In common with the trend in general use of Web 2.0 applications, their use by archives is also on the increase. The effects are significant and have implications in areas crucial to Archives. The impacts vary and de-pend on the type of applications, their characteristics and functionalities, and the way they are used and kept. One of the immediate effects of the use of these applications is the growing number of public they reach (visitors, potential users or actual users). This effect represents an extremely significant quantitative element to cultural organisations seeking to enlarge and diversify their users and to raise their public recognition far beyond their current number of users. Apart from the increase in the number of users reached, there are other less immediate but nonetheless beneficial effects from the use of Web 2.0 applications: increased importance of the archive to the user; increased involvement of users and improved communication of the archives with such users in new dy-namic ways to engage; improvement in the archive’s image; potential of new interactive services to raise the level and quality of the service pro-vided; greater ability to find quick solutions to meet the needs of users; improvement in shared knowledge and collaboration; diversification of users; varied access of its collections, increased awareness and additional information about collections; improved relationships and links in the sector – improvement in communication among archivists (beneficial effects that can be extended to libraries and librarians). However, there nonetheless exists a degree of reluctance to the use of these applications by some archives that choose either to reject or postpone their adoption of such applications due to their lack of knowledge of them, or their reluctance to recognise these applications as ‘official’ or valid. The informal nature of Web 2.0 seems to cause unease among institutions which might be said to operate within a formal sphere; such institutions do not consider them to offer sufficient added value to justify the necessary allocation of resources and effort to implement them, and point to the pressing na-ture of other priorities.

Apart from the resistance arising from the lack of knowledge or non-recognition of Web 2.0, the use of these applications also has a negative side. Data protection of social network users may not always be guaranteed, there is also the danger of giving access to data to third parties with commercial motives, and the fact that some of these applications, which are now free of charge, may not be toll-free in the future. Such questions are not yet totally clarified, nor can they be easily answered, neither by individual users nor institutional user. There are also other issues: the possibility of anonymous users interacting in an abusive fashion with these institutions, as well as unwelcome associations with certain religious and / or political groups or sym-bols; applications that are time-consuming; applications may be used under the name of an or-ganisation.

Each application represents an individual context of use and allows a set of specific functionalities within a new rationale of democratisation in the production of content and access thereto, through interactive and collaborative platforms where anyone can be an author, publish and access content freely. The use of Web 2.0 applications by archives is best under-taken with de-fined strategies and objectives. While objectives are often more easily identi-fied, the strategies of use that generate them are defined in a more or a less clear manner, de-pending on institu-tions’ global vision of their engagement with Web 2.0. The success or fai-lure in the use of Web 2.0 applications is dependent on a number of factors and the possible negative aspects arising from the use of these applications do not seem to outweigh their po-tential advantages.

Katharina M. BERGMAYR (Wien/AT)
„Digital sozial? Chancen und Herausforderungen sozialer Netzwerke für Bibliotheken und Archive“ – “Digital social? Chances and Challenges of Social Networks for Libraries and Ar-chives”

Libraries and archives still have the image of dusty institutions, with staff in old-fashioned coats and big glasses who discipline users with a loud “Shhh!” It is about time for an image change, we need to show our visitors that we do not want to keep the collected knowledge to ourselves and in obscurity.

In times when the group of so-called digital natives is increasing steadily, many people think that everything can be found on the web and that our services are no longer required. To teach them better, information services must go to wherever their users are: on the web, or better: on the web 2.0. Numerous studies show that the internet is an integrated part of everyday life. Most of all social networks, such as Facebook, You Tube, Twitter & Co. have a steadily in-creasing number of members and visitors. The signing up of libraries and archives to these so-cial networks is connected to challenges: sometimes conflicting privacy regulations and copy-rights may create grey areas in law, a high initial effort and the continuous maintenance and updates take time and often require the help of colleagues who are not conversant with public relations or the digital services of the institution. Nevertheless, we must not underestimate the chances that social networks offer to information services: we can invalidate preconceptions and stereotypes. New, young and innovative users can be approached, and more importantly, retained. We are present not only in the real, but also in the virtual world, where we need to take care of our identity by ourselves and not leave it in charge of our users. The information we provide for our users is much more direct and so is the feedback we get. Moreover, one of the biggest chances is the additional public relations at only little extra costs. Of course, a criti-cal analysis of the networks on offer is essential. Not every hype needs to be followed. The institution must position itself in suitable networks and fill them with individual and dis-tinct contents.

Section 2: Archival Cooperation in Europe:

Heidemarie SPECHT (St. Pölten/AT) “The European Network on Archival Cooperation (E-NArC)”

ENArC is a project submitted for the EU Culture Programme 2007-2013, it will last 4 ½ years and joins 14 partners from 10 European countries.
ENArC is aimed at effectively establishing and gradually expanding a European network for written cultural heritage, which is supposed to strengthen the historical memory of Europe’s countries and cultures by the means of developing innovative strategies.
It is most of all Europe’s numerous archival institutions that are to be considered the guardi-ans of historical memory. All information kept within archives documents the birth and growth of Europe and constitutes the basis of the continent’s identity and that of its countries, people and culture. However, making use of these unique records has so far been a restricted business. The purpose of the ENArC project is to offer all European citizens comprehensive and easy access to their historical memory via the Internet.

The project has following objectives:
1) Establishing and expanding the already existing network of ICARUS
– Strengthening the international cooperation by
improving the communication between the institutions
developing common strategies for making the written cultural heritage available
coordinating individual projects and initiatives
– Linking the Neighbourhood Programme

2) Continuous exchange of know-how and experiences
through project meetings, national workshops, conferences, experts exchange-programmes, education and training programmes, communication platforms and the inclusion of new part-ners within the network (Linking the Neighbourhood Programme)

3) Digitisation and indexing activities of the participating partners
– Increasing the amount of digital content on national or content-related portals, on European archive portals (such as APEnet) and on Europeana
– Developing innovative technical standards for searching and processing historical sources (collaborative tools)
– Testing and using these open-source tools in the context of scientific sub-projects

4) Publicity
– Publishing project results both within the network and to the general public: newsletters, an online communication platform, a project homepage, a project logo, radio and TV broadcasts, printed brochures or printed advertisements in newspapers and magazines
– ENArC Lectures

Luis ENSEÑAT-CALDERON (Madrid/ES) “The European Portal for Documents and Archives: the APEnet project”
APEnet stands for “Archives Portal Europe” and it is a consortium of European state archives administrations, together with the Europeana Foundation with two main objectives, the first one is the creation of an unique access point about the information contained in the European Na-tional Archives, and the second one to make this information consistent with Europeana and available thought it.

The project started in January 2009 and it is envisaged to create the first version of the portal at the beginning of 2011, and the final version the first days of 2011. The overall goal of the AP-Enet project is to gather the existing digital archival content of Europe and make it avail-able on-line, we do not plan to create new digital material, but to work with the existing one. The aim is to build a network of European National Archives that, can offer online access to finding aids covering digitised and not digitised documents, to the individual documents and digital objects through these finding aids, and information about individual collections, the institutions that house them, and their creators.

At the end of the project, information about 16.000.000 multilevel descriptions of documents and archives and 31.000.000 digitised objects kept by National Archives, will be available in the final portal. This huge amount of information will be available in Europeana too, but not all of it: in the Europeana portal the final user will be able to find the digital objects with its de-scriptions, mainly digitalised documents, but the information displayed in the APEnet ga-teway that will not have digital objects associated (documents that are not digitalised) will be only available throughout APEnet.

The chosen standards for APEnet are the Encoded Archival Description (or EAD) for descrip-tions of finding aids, the Encoded Archival Context (or EAC) for descriptions of record crea-tors and the Encoding Archival Guide (or EAG) for descriptions of archival repositories. In the project we do not intend to create new standards, but to follow the existing standards that are applied to Archives.

If one of the pillars of APEner are the archival standards, the other one, as it is stated in the Grant Agreement with the European Commission, is the need to contextualise the content of archives holdings and collections in order to make individual archival objects searchable, accessible, and last but not least – usable.

To finalise, the “Archives Portal Europe” project can be described as a network of National Archives that facilitates access to the existing archival resources across Europe, that contextu-al-ise the content of archives holdings and collections in order to make individual archival objects searchable, accessible, and last but not least – usable.

Gerald MAIER (Stuttgart/DE) „Europeana und Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek – Sachstand und Perspektiven für die Archive“ – “Europeana and Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek – Status Quo and Perspectives for Archives”

The presentation of digitized items on the web and long-term preservation of genuine digital information are major challenges for archives in the information society. In the age of “Google” and “Wikipedia”, inter-institutional and inter-disciplinary online information sys-tems and portals with preferably free of charge and quality-assured access play an increasing role also for digital items and scientific information.

Therefore, on a European level, a boundary-transcending European digital library, called “Eu-ropeana” (http://www.europeana.eu) is being established. Currently, more than 5 Mio items can be accessed, but only a small part comes from archives and their form of presentation needs still to be further developed. In Germany an interdisciplinary library, called “Deutsche Digitale Biblio-thek” (http://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de) was initiated this year. In this library, digital items and scientific information from over 30.000 cultural and scientific institutions will be made accessible. This platform, supported by the Federal Government and Federal States (Länder), will be Germany’s contribution to the Europeana and its aggregator at the same time.

In the presentation the status quo and perspectives of Europeana will be illustrated with regard to the archives and an outlook on the “Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek” will be provided.

Vlatka LEMIĆ (Zagreb/HR) “The ARHiNET-System as a model for archival net-works”
At the end of 2006 Croatian State Archives started the construction of a new archival infor-ma-tion system which should cover all archival functions: keeping, preserving, arranging and use of archival records. ARHiNET is a web application which includes several modules: Se-curity and authorisation, Description and processing of archives, Archival registers and do-cumenta-tion, Creators and holders of archival material, Preservation of archives, Digital con-tents and Education. It is a national archival system in Croatia, recognized by the Ministry of Culture as national project, as well as part of the e-Croatia program, the operational plan of the Govern-ment of the Republic of Croatia.

ARHiNET serves as national integrated system for the exchange of information among institutions that keep archival records and archives portal for all information considering of archi-val material of any type and content (textual, graphic, cartographic, audiovisual, electronic, objects, photographs etc.) relevant for Croatia. It is created on modular basis which enables design and implementation of particular modules as separate projects in a relatively short period of time and their continuous integration into the unique information system. Advantages of such a solution are the creation of an integrated base and a unique system of data protection with minimal costs. ARHiNET system structure comprises of two parts: the open one is intended for external users who want to search databases and catalogues and use other offered services, and the protected part, intended for the employees in archives and other institutions, in which all professional-business processes that define processing and management of archival material are taking place. The program solution consists of several databases organized according to the logic of records type and user type/roles that define access to particular re-cords:

In October 2007 the online Register of archival fonds and collections of the Republic of Croa-tia, which is an integral part of the ARHiNET system, was made publicly available, and onli-ne access was provided to the data on archival records kept in the archives and in other insti-tutions that hold archival material. The Register currently contains data on 15.000 fonds and collec-tions, 70.000 other archival units (series, files and items), 19.500 records creators and 7.000 holders of archival material, more than 4.000 finding aids and 3.000 bibliographical units on archival holdings, as well as well as cca. 7.000 digital copies of particular documents. Data are being entered and continually updated on the basis of submissions by records crea-tors and owners under the supervision of the state archives. Around 750 employees from more than 200 various institutions are currently registered in the system. All institutions included in the project contribute not only to the standardization and improvement of services and prod-ucts provided by archives but also to the creation of unique national archival information net-work.

ARHiNET implementation enhanced the standardization of the work of archival institutions, and enabled establishment of a unique system for managing and using archival material, as well as data integration and exchange among the institutions that keep archival records. Func-tional-ities concerning digital record ensure integration of traditional and digital archives and present concrete solutions based on practical work.

Peter Pavel KLASINC (Trieste/IT) “The “International Institute for Archival Science of Trieste and Maribor (IIAS)”
The “International Institute for Archival Science of Trieste and Maribor– IIAS”

The International Institute for Archival Science – IIAS originated in the Centre for Technical and Professional Problems in Archives founded in 1986 on the initiative of Mr. Peter Pavel Klasinc, Director General of the Pokrajinski Arhiv in Maribor and organizer of the archival meetings in Radenci concerning the former Republic of Yugoslavia. Due to the constantly growing participation of foreign professionals it was decided to establish an international ar-chi-val institute with a special focus on the Balkan-Danube area.

Since 1991 the IIAS has been issuing an annual publication named “Atlanti”. Apart from the annual conferences the IIAS excelled at various initiatives and activities, such as the “Glos-sary of Regional Historical Terminology”, edited in 1995 in German, Italian and Slovene; or else the International Course of Archival Technology held in 1996. A course dedicated to Di-gital Ar-chival Management was offered as early as 1998. As a result of a protocol signed with the Italian Ministry of Culture in October 2005, the International Institute for Archival Science – IIAS has since been headquartered at the seat of the Italian State Archive in Trieste, its second foot-hold still being at the University of Maribor. Today’s 21 member countries include Austria, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Montenegro, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, and Ukraine. The official languages are English, Italian and Slovene. The members are appointed by various archives or the respective country’s na-tional archives. In Germany, for instance, the State Archives of Bavaria; in Austria, the Re-gional Archive of the Province of Styria; in Poland, the National Archive of Kracow.

As per the statutes of 2005, the focus of activities of the IIAS is on the following:
• The organisation and promotion of conferences and seminars as well as training cour-ses in the area of archival research.
• The support and promotion of research and publications
• The consolidation of archival sciences within the member countries
• The Annual Meeting (Trieste)
• The publication of research results in the “Atlanti” magazine

The IIAS consists of the following administrative bodies:
• The President and the Assembly of Official Members
• The Director
• The Executive Board

The Director is the supreme representative of the IIAS and is supported by the respective Di-rector of the State Archive in Trieste (currently Grazia Tato). The Executive Board consists of 5 members, among them the Director of the IIAS and his or her deputy as well as the Presi-dent of the Assembly of the Official Members (Antonio Dentoni Litta, Italian Ministry of Culture). The Board supports the Director in his or her tasks. Apart from the official members (one per member country) there are several honorary members who have distinguished them-selves in their services for the IIAS (Pferschy, Kecsemeti, etc.)

One of the IIAS’ ongoing projects is the publication of the magazine “Atlanti”. “Atlanti” is multilingual and of distinct international orientation. The magazine illustrates the entire band-width of archival sciences that are promoted and refined at the institute. The latest editions are available for free download on the IIAS website (http://www.iias-trieste-maribor.eu).

In 2007 an international Archival School was established to take place in connection with the IIAS Conference in Trieste. It is a postgraduate course, held by various changing lecturers. Their topics address all kinds of present-day problems in archival science, questions of digiti-sa-tion and digital data as well as international archival legislation. Most attendants come from Central and Eastern Europe. A course period stretches over 3 years (3 courses in Au-tumn).

Closely connected with the School is the Annual Meeting of the IIAS in Trieste, the Interna-tional Archival Day, enjoying increased popularity of late. Most recently some 200 people were participating, discussing topics such as archival classes/ archival schools; security and preservation, archives in the 20th century, or archival legislation throughout Europe. At the same time, the institute has acknowledged the need for a common archival “language”, which means creating a terminological glossary in various languages. It keeps on growing and is available online under the heading “Short dictionary of archival terminology”. The project is “work in progress”, currently including 21 languages.

For some time now there has also been an international fair included in the program of the In-ternational Archival Day. Companies related to archival technology and digitisation are invi-ted to participate and take the opportunity to introduce their products in short presentations. This year’s list includes Metis, Hyperborea and Scope.

By starting an online forum for topics of archival science, the IIAS has become active in the web 2.0 as well. The forum is a virtual platform for members and guests to exchange on cur-rent topics, while the institute urges archivists to participate in order to heighten the level of exper-tise and knowledge. Also, the forum provides for sub-platforms for the Archvial School and the glossary project.

Of course there is an open mailing list for latest news and information. The IIAS cordially in-vites all archivists and colleagues to join the Annual Meeting in Trieste. The institute looks back on many years of experience in exchanging with colleagues from many different coun-tries, also outside the European Union. IIAS is open for cooperation and mutual projects with other institutes and research centres, especially in Europe. Last but not least the new media play an increasingly important part in the IIAS’ activities, and not just in the case of the onli-ne glos-sary – also the institute’s website has been re-designed and modernized. Thanks to the very successful cooperation with the State Archive in Trieste the IIAS was able to secure its future operation.

Karel HALLA (Cheb/CZ) „Das Projekt “Bayerisch-tschechisches Netzwerk digitaler Ge-schichtsquellen”

Das gegenseitige Zusammenleben der Tschechen und Deutschen war und ist immer noch durch mehrere Geschichtsereignisse und durch daraus erfolgte Verworrenheiten beeinflusst. In Folge der beiderseitigen Geschichte kam es zu einer gewaltsamen Zerreißung von vielen wertvollen Archivbeständen, die heute in tschechischen und bayerischen Staatsarchiven deponiert sind.
Das Gebietsarchiv in Pilsen und die Generaldirektion der Staatlichen Archive Bayerns in München führen ein gemeinsames grenzüberschreitendes Projekt durch, um die in der Ver-gangenheit zerrissenen Archivbestände in einem virtuellen Ganzen wieder zusammenzufügen. Dies soll mithilfe einer umfassenden Digitalisierung und überhaupt der digitalen Medien ge-schehen (gemeinsame Webpräsenz und virtuelle Rekonstruktion im Internet).
In den tschechischen Archiven wird eine große Menge von Archivbeständen aufbewahrt, die einen direkten Bezug zur Geschichte der Sudetendeutschen und des bayerischen Grenzraums haben. Auf der anderen Seite hat das Bayerische Hauptstaatsarchiv vor drei Jahren als Depositum die Bestände des Sudetendeutschen Archivs übernommen; in diesem befinden sich sehr viele Archivalien, die einen direkten Bezug auf das heutige Gebiet der Tschechischen Republik besitzen. Die Archivalien des Sudetendeutschen Archivs wurden zum Teil mit der Vertreibung der sudetendeutschen Bevölkerung nach dem 2. Weltkrieg über die Grenze getragen. Es handelt sich um Archivalien aus der Provenienz der Stadt- und Gemeindearchive, um Fotos, adlige und kirchliche Archive, um Gemeinde, Pfarr- und Schulchroniken und ande-re Archivalien von Orts- und Regionalbedeutung. Im Staatsarchiv Amberg wird mit dem Klosterarchiv von Wald-sassen ein überregional herausragender und besonders für den tsche-chischen Grenzraum hochinteressanter Archivbestand mit seinen Urkunden in das Projekt eingebracht.
Mit der Realisierung dieses Projekts werden 65 Jahre nach dem Ende des 2. Weltkriegs zu-sammengehörige Archivalien in ein virtuelles Ganzes zusammengeführt. Dabei werden digi-tale Reproduktionen entstehen, die dann mittels eines Webservers der breiten Öffentlichkeit sowie Wissenschaftlern und Heimatforschern präsentiert werden.
Durch die gemeinsame Mitarbeit der Archivare, Historiker und anderer Fachkräfte soll auch wesentlich intensiver als bisher an nicht veröffentlichten „unbekannten“ Archivalien, sog. Bo-hemika und Sudetika, in Archiven beider Seiten gearbeitet werden.
Die Realisierung dieses Projektes wird wesentlich zur Entwicklung der tschechisch-deutschen Beziehungen beitragen, bildet aber auch eine musterhafte Präzedenzplattform für die fachli-che interarchivische Kommunikation und Kommunikation der historischen Arbeitsstellen, aber auch von weiteren fachlichen und wissenschaftlichen Einrichtungen.

Appell des Berlin-Brandenburgischen Wirtschaftarchivs: Wirtschaftliches Gedächtnis der Region als Gemeinschaftsaufgabe

“Am 19. November 2010 eröffnete Dr. Maria Borgmann, Erste Stellv. Vorsitzende des Berlin-Brandenburgischen Wirtschaftarchivs e.V. (BBWA), den ersten Wirtschaftshistorischen Abend des BBWA im „Goldberger-Saal“ des „Ludwig-Erhard-Hauses“ der IHK Berlin:
Sie zeigte sich über die unerwartet große Resonanz zu dieser Auftaktveranstaltung einer geplanten Reihe sehr erfreut – weit über die erwarteten 70 Persönlichkeiten hatten sich eingefunden. Ein besonderer Dank galt der Familie Rehm aus Potsdam, deren Sponsoring die Umsetzung dieser Projektidee überhaupt erst möglich gemacht hatte. Auch dem Verein Berliner Kaufleute und Industrieller e.V. (VBKI) wurde gedankt, denn die Bereitstellung des Raumes passe in das Konzept, sich über Industriekultur in Berlin auszutauschen.
Dr. Manfred Uhlitz als Vorsitzender des Kooperationspartners Verein für die Geschichte Berlins e.V., gegr. 1865 (VfdGB) führte aus, dass das Thema Wirtschaft elementarer Bestandteil der Geschichte Berlins sei – es gemahne daran, was von Menschen geschaffen, aber eben auch zerstört worden sei. Bei Erörterungen der Berliner Wirtschaft werde häufig der Blick aus der Gegenwart in die Zukunft gerichtet; es lohne sich aber, hierzu auch in die Geschichte zu blicken. Das Gründungsjahr 1865 des VfdGB falle just in jene Phase des Aufstiegs der Stadt Berlin zur bedeutenden europäischen Industriestadt. Große Unternehmer hätten in dieser Zeit das Bild und gesellschaftliche Leben der Stadt entscheidend mitgeprägt – so durch die Architektur, durch Mäzenatentum und eben auch bedeutende Erfindungen. Dr. Uhlitz dankte VfdGB-Schriftführer Dirk Pinnow, der diese Kooperationsveranstaltung zusammen mit Björn Berghausen vom BBWA mitinitiert hatte. Pinnow, zugleich Präsident der Gesellschaft für Transfer immateriellen Vermögens e.V. (GTIV), hatte für den VfdGB die Verhandlungen geführt und auch namens der GTIV Unterstützung zugesagt. Das GTIV-Präsidium wurde an diesem Abend ferner von Vizepräsident Wolfgang Rogalski und Generalsekretär Carsten Pinnow vertreten.

Dr. Frank Wittendorfer, Leiter des Archivs der Siemens AG in München, machte deutlich, dass sein Vortrag eigentlich „Siemens in Berlin – der Weg zur Elektropolis und zurück“ hätte heißen sollen, wenn man die Auswirkungen des Zweiten Weltkriegs bedenke, aber das heutige Engagement von Siemens in Berlin mit rund 12.500 Mitarbeitern und der Vision, Berlin etwa zur „Stadt der Elektromobilität“, zu machen, habe ihn doch veranlasst, „und zurück“ zu streichen.
Die heutige Siemens AG wurzele in der 1847 unter der Leitung von Werner von Siemens und Johann Georg Halske in Berlin gegründeten „Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske“. In der Gründerzeit habe Siemens quasi eine Monopolstellung besessen. In den 1870er-Jahren habe sich Berlin im Kontext der industriellen Entwicklung auch zum führenden Finanzplatz entwickelt; so sei Georg von Siemens einer der ersten Direktoren der Deutschen Bank gewesen. In Berlin seien damals Kapital, Innovationsfreudigkeit und Arbeitskräfte als wesentliche Fortschrittsfaktoren zusammengekommen.
Anfang der 1930er-Jahre sei deutlich geworden, dass ein weiterer Ausbau der Siemensstadt nicht möglich sein würde. Ab 1934 sei es dann zu Erweiterungen außerhalb Berlins gekommen – eben auch, um Zusammenballungen in Erwartung eines kommenden Luftkrieges zu vermeiden und dem Engpass bei den Arbeitskräften zu begegnen. Der Zweite Weltkrieg habe Berlins Industriepotenzial zu 75 Prozent zerstört; nicht nur die Luftangriffe und Kampfhandlungen, sondern auch die sowjetischen Demontagen nach Kriegsende seien verheerend gewesen – Siemens habe vier Fünftel seiner Unternehmenssubstanz verloren. Gleichwohl habe man in Berlin 1945 mit einer „Notfertigung“ begonnen und mit nunmehr 14.000 statt zuvor 60.000 Beschäftigten Haushaltsbedarf hergestellt. Der Mauerbau 1961 sei dann nochmals eine Zäsur gewesen, als Tausende von Siemens-Beschäftigten nicht mehr zu ihren Arbeitsplätzen gelangen konnten. Nach der Wiedervereinigung spiele Siemens in Berlin wieder eine herausragende Rolle auf den Gebieten Forschung und Entwicklung. Heute unterhalte Siemens in Berlin seinen bundesweit größten Ausbildungsstandort.

Der BBWA-Vorsitzende Prof. Dr. Klaus Dettmer stellte die Aufgaben des Berlin-Brandenburgischen Wirtschaftsarchivs unter dem Titel „Ein Gedächtnis für die Wirtschaft“ dar. Wirtschaftsarchive dienten vorrangig der Rechtssicherung und in zweiter Linie der Gedächstnisbewahrung. Das BBWA nutze nun die Synergie der Nähe zum Landesarchiv Berlin. Aufgabe sei es, dem Verlust von Schriftgut, Fotos sowie sonstiger Medien entgegenzuwirken, wüssten doch heute viele Unternehmen vor allem aus Kostengründen nicht, wie sie mit dem eigenen Archivgut verfahren sollten, und als Informationsdienstleister zu fungieren. Leider befänden sich heute noch viele Archivalien in Kartons und könnten daher so nicht erschlossen werden. Er appellierte daran, den BBWA-Ausbau als eine gemeinschaftliche Anstrengung für die Zukunft anzunehmen. Das BBWA wolle auch dem „History-Marketing“ der Region und als Lernort für Schule und Universitäten dienen. Mit dem Aufruf „Helfen Sie, die Wurzeln zu erhalten, liefern Sie Ihren Baustein für das wirtschaftliche Gedächtnis der Region!“ schloss Prof. Dettmer seinen Vortrag.”
Quelle: Link

Köln: Petra Bosse-Huber steht der Stiftung Stadtgedächtnis vor

“Die Vizepräses der Evangelischen Kirche im Rheinland, Petra Bosse-Huber, ist Kuratoriumsvorsitzende der Kölner Stiftung Stadtgedächtnis. Die Theologin der zweitgrößten Landeskirche wurde auf der konstituierenden Sitzung einstimmig gewählt. Zweiter Vorsitzender wurde der Direktor des Rheinisch-Westfälischen Wirtschaftsarchiv, Ulrich Soénius. Beide hätten sich nach dem Einsturz des Archivs persönlich stark für die Rettung der Archivalien eingesetzt, hieß es. Die Stiftung Stadtgedächtnis von Stadt, Land NRW und den beiden großen christlichen Kirchen widmet sich dem Erhalt der Dokumente aus dem eingestürzten Stadtarchiv. Im Kuratorium, als unabhängiges Kontrollorgan dem Stifterwillen verpflichtet, sitzen Kölns OB Jürgen Roters, NRW-Ministerpräsidentin Hannelore Kraft und Kardinal Joachim Meisner.”
Quelle: Die Welt, 23.11.201

s. a. ?p=16879#comments

Jahrestagung E-Akte 2010 – eine Mitschrift als Nachlese

Ernst Mayer berichtet in seinem Blog: “…. Zunächst hören wir etwas von H. Keitel vom Landesarchiv BW zu den “Kriterien für die vertrauenswürdige digitale Langzeitarchive”. Untertitel “DIN 31644″. Die wollte ich immer schon mal kennenlernen…

Die DIN Norm definiert nur (organisatorische) Rahmenbedingungen und schreibt keine spezifischen technischen Richtlinien vor. Z.B. sind keine Vorschriften zur Verwendung der elektronischen Signatur enthalten. Er erwähnt, dass es auch “konkurrierende” Normen auf internationaler Ebene gibt, aber aus Zeit und Aufwandsgründen (Der Zeithorizont wäre mit mind. 5 Jahren anzusetzen) keine Zusammenführung erfolgen wird.

Der sehr abstrakte Vortrag endet mit dem Linktipp http://www.entwuerfe.din.de und der Bitte an die Teilnehmer, sich den Standard anzusehen um Kommentare, Lob und Kritik zu hinterlassen. …. Gesamtfazit: Ich bin – besonders wegen der Vorankündigungen – mit hoher Erwartungshaltung zu dem Kongress gefahren. Die Thematik “nachhaltige Strukturierung, Sicherung und Speicherung von SocialMedia Inhalten”, sowie die “Integration von Web2.0 Systemen in DMS, WF und Archivsystemstrukturen” hat es aber dann – vermutlich in Ermangelung von vorhandenen Praxisansätzen – nicht auf die Tagesordnung geschafft.

Kommunen und kommunale Dienstleister waren auf dem Kongress an nur wenigen Fingern abzählbar.

Was bleibt, ist die Erkenntnis, dass sich die Anforderungen und Praxiserfahrungen von DMS Projekten trotz deutlich unterschiedlicher Arbeitsweisen zwischen Kommunen auf der einen und den Länder- und Bundesbehörden auf der anderen Seite durchaus ähneln. Auch das beruhigt irgendwie. ……”

Landesarchiv NRW: Skandal weitet sich aus

“Bei den Ermittlungen wegen des Verdachts von Geheimnisverrat und Korruption im Zusammenhang mit Grundstücksgeschäften des Landesbetriebs BLB ermittelt die Staatsanwaltschaft Wuppertal nach Informationen unserer Zeitung jetzt in weiteren Fällen. Bislang standen die Umstände beim Kauf des Grundstücks für den Bau des Landesarchivs in Duisburg im Zentrum der Ermittlungen. Nun nehmen die Ermittler auch Geschäfte bei der Errichtung der Fachhochschule Köln und des Finanzamts in Oberhausen ins Visier.”
Quelle: Rheinische Post v. 25.11.2010

Archive in der Krise: Kreisarchiv Siegen-Wittgenstein

Der Kreis Siegen-Wittgen- stein will im nächsten Jahr elf Prozent weniger Geld für Kultur ausgeben. Das betrifft zum Beispiel das „Lyz“ und auch das Kreisarchiv. Im Haushalt ist aber auch für das Festival „Kultur Pur“ fünf Prozent weniger Geld eingeplant worden. Hermannjosef Droege von der CDU sprach sich gestern im Kreis-Kulturausschuss dagegen aus, den Kultur-Etat so zu beschließen. Man müsse deutlich zeigen, dass man damit nicht einverstanden sei. Empfohlen wurde der Haushaltsplan dann doch, allerdings mit nur 3 Ja-Stimmen und 14 Enthaltungen.
Quelle: Radio Siegen, Nachrichten 26.11.2010

Link zur Beschlussvorlage des Kulturausschusses des Kreises Siegen-Wittgenstein

Kommt bald eine EU-Richtlinie zu verwaisten Werken?

http://iuwis.de/blog/new-directive-orphan-works (Englisch)

http://www.ub.uni-dortmund.de/listen/inetbib/msg43474.html

Aus den bis jetzt bekannt gewordenen Äußerungen der zuständigen
EU-Generaldirektion läßt sich vermuten, daß der Entwurf den Mitgliedsstaaten die
Einführung einer neuen Schranke für verwaiste Werke in ihre nationalen
Urheberrechtsgesetze vorgeben wird. Bibliotheken sollen per Gesetz ermächtigt
werden, verwaiste Werke nach einer “sorgfältigen Suche” (diligent search) zu
digtalisieren und weltweit (on a cross-border basis) im Internet zugänglich zu
machen.

Frankreich: Streit um Nationales Geschichtsmuseum

http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/kultur/aktuell/ein_geschichtsmuseum_mit_vorgeschichte_1.8458244.html

Als Erstes traten die Mitarbeiter des Nationalarchivs in Streik. Sie klagen seit langem über die veralteten Infrastrukturen und den Platzmangel des Marais-Komplexes. Im Rahmen einer ambitiösen Modernisierung hatten sie – endlich – den Bau eines neuen Zentrums mit 62 000 Quadratmetern Nutzfläche zugestanden bekommen, das nach Plänen des italienischen Architekten Massimiliano Fuksas in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, etwa zehn Kilometer nördlich von Paris, errichtet wird. Während dieses Zentrum ab 2012 den Archivbestand aus der Zeit nach der Revolution beherbergen wird, sollten in den frei gewordenen Räumlichkeiten im Marais unter anderem die 34 000 Laufmeter notarielle Urkunden erschlossen werden, auf welche Geschichtsforscher seit Jahrzehnten warten. Und auch Veranstaltungen für das grosse Publikum sollten stattfinden, etwa Wechselausstellungen. Sarkozys Kulturminister, Frédéric Mitterrand, hatte das Projekt noch im Dezember 2009 gutgeheissen. Aber neun Monate später warf der Präsident wieder alles über den Haufen – wie es seine Gewohnheit ist, ohne die Betroffenen zu konsultieren, ja ohne diese auch bloss vorab zu informieren.

Museen sollten (Open Access)-eBooks anbieten!

http://blog.culture-to-go.com/2010/11/25/e-book-chancen-und-potenziale-feur-museen

“Als erster Schritt können bereits vorhandene Texte (vom Faltblatt bis zum Katalog) bei Portalen wie http://issuu.com, http://scribd.com oder http://docstoc.com eingestellt werden. Der Upload ist kostenlos, schnell und funktioniert ganz einfach. Die Portale akzeptieren alle gängigen Formate, es entsteht also kein Aufwand für die Konvertierung. Wer diese Kanäle regelmäßig nutzt, hat die Chance, die attraktive Zielgruppe der jungen und web-affinen “internet natives” zu erreichen. Über eingebaute Sharing-Buttons wird den Nutzern leicht gemacht, solche Veröffentlichungen über Social-Media-Plattformen wie Facebook oder Twitter weiterzuverbreiten. Und sie lassen sich durch wenige Mausklicks auf eigene oder fremde Websites einbetten.”